ESP.LITERATURE

(from ACTS OF COMPLICITY, stories )

He began without enthusiasm. A crowded room filled with indifference. Open windows. Urban … calefaction. That should do. He took a cloth from his pocket, his glasses from his face, and polished their lenses. He replaced his glasses, gathered his thoughts, nodded once, and began.

“Art,” he said, “is where you find it. For those of you who hunger for parts of speech, ‘where’ is an adverb. Its etymology gives Old English from which comes ‘hwær, hwar’ meaning at what place. The Proto-Germanic adverb ‘hwar,’ source also of Old Saxon ‘hwar,’ Old Norse ‘hvar,’ Old Frisian ‘hwer,’ Middle Dutch ‘waer,’ Old High German ‘hwar,’ German ‘wo,’ Gothic ‘hvar.’ ‘Where’ is the equivalent to Latin cur, from Proto-Indo-European root kwo, stem of relative and inter- rogative pronouns. ‘Where it’s at’ first noted around 1903.”

Start a speech with humor. Make eye contact with one individual. A couple of tricks for fashioning a successful oration. Or, hawk up a lung. It no doubt sounded as though he were rudely clearing his throat as he ran through the Germanic sounds; but he had captured their attention. For the moment.

“Works that are labeled as art,” he said, “come in all shapes and sizes; and the quality of the work fills the spectrum from indifferent  to exquisite. At the highest level—Beethoven, Rembrandt, Shakespeare, to name just three male Caucasians—art is without intention.  Any creative work raised to this level of art is an anomaly. All such work is fortuitous. It does not intend to inspire, elucidate, or explicate. Once in the grip of the muses, creators can only create. Concepts, such as intention, dissolve.”

He looked from right to left. Blank faces. The room was filled with a melange of genders and ages. Typical group of students at an urban university these days. The walls were a shabby pale green, scarred with the pinpricks, staples, odd nails, dents, and tears of the many years of use. And bodies leaning and lax, mostly well fed given the corpulence he saw, well fed and poorly dressed. Insousciance, in a word.

“It bears repeating,” he said. “Works of art have no intention.”

His back to the windows. Sun streaming through, southwest aspect. Her desk perched there in the corner. Low wide rostrum. Beak of ship. Prow. Miss Didactic at the helm. Somewhat surprised at her shorts and sleeveless blouse, sandals. If her legs are as long as her body is tall, she will be as tall as I am. Without the fat. Hair bleached? A wig? 

 With his sport coat and tan slacks, light blue dress shirt and knitted navy tie, polished leather loafers, he was overdressed.

“Though they lack intention,” Ghiorso said, “that is not to say that works of art do not require a good deal of elbow grease. Creating art is hard work.”

He paused to scan the room.

“And the scientist, bent on discovery, he, too, must lean heavily on his creativity. No difference. So  then the grip of the muses becomes the crux of the issue. Muse: Anyone care to offer a definition? No? There’s at least two you should know. Probably do. Try this: in Greek and Roman mythology each of nine goddesses are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who preside over the arts and sciences. These are the mythical muses. Or this: a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.

“So if asked where does one’s inspiration come from, you might reply, the muses. As good an answer as any, to my way of thinking. Or, if you would prefer to be more macabre and obtuse, you might say inspiration comes from somewhere inside my skull. Or gut. Or the great toe on my right foot. Take your pick. Comes to the same thing.”

He scanned the room left to right and back again. Disconcerting to be the center of so much … apathy. Or perhaps simply a disconnect, who he and why should I care. A woman,  Asian, Japanese, I’d guess, seems to be … He turned slightly to his left, began to smile, said to this woman, “Let’s have a look at the muses, shall we.”

She returned a smile. He gave a quick, short bob of the head and turned slowly away.

“The ancient Greeks, those clever fellows, postulated the muses as the source of inspiration for all of their arts and sciences, and for knowledge in general. Nine muses were named and personified, daughters of Zeus, they were, and they became the romantic companions of Apollo’s posse. Lusty fellows those Greeks. Athens was a much different world than Rome. Or ours. It’s important to understand the context.”

Miss Didactic began scribbling notes. A bearded young man raised a hand and says, “Three billion Chinese don’t care. How is this relevant? Why are we here? Why are you here?”

Ghiorso considered, raised a closed hand to his face, and gently rubbed the tip of his nose with a knuckle. “Hyperbole,” he said. “Good argumentative technique.  However … probably not prudent to throw facts at a journalist. The current population of China is not more than 1.25 billion. And you are here by choice. The door is open. Leave if you wish. The room is overcrowded anyway.” He stared the young man into silence. 

He shook his head, turning away from the fellow. Miss Didactic has considered this student, then frowned at Ghiorso who looks at the Japanese woman. “Anyone care to tell me how you decided on breakfast this morning?”

She took the bait. “We probably all did something like … if we had breakfast … like considered our options and then picked what we wanted.”

“Picked how?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The question becomes how does one decide, how does one decide between this and that?”

Some discussion quietly ensued, here and there, with Miss Didactic scribbling her notes, the sun heating the room, a film of sweat now dampening Ghiorso’s forehead. He turned and walked towards the windows, students in the building opposite, passing through the courtyard, hum of distant traffic, pigeons fluttered from the eaves.

He turned to the young bearded man. “Are decisions voluntary or involuntary? What do you think?”

The fellow didn’t hesitate. “Voluntary,” he said. “Obviously.”

“Ah ha,” Ghiorso said, smiling. “So if decision is voluntary, every decision you make would have to be preceded by a decision to decide preceded by a decision to decide creating an infinite recursive loop which, fortunately, does not occur.”

“What?” He pushed himself off the wall, chin lifting, eyes asquint

Ten paces at dawn. Swords or pistols?

“If one is referring to computer science, recursive involves a program of which part requires the application of the whole, so that its explicit interpretation requires in general many successive executions: a recursive subroutine. If we are talking mathematics or linguistics, which we are, the definition involves the repeated application of a rule, definition, or procedure to successive results.”

Ghiorso put his hand behind his head, stretches the nape of his neck. Considered. “The rules of grammar, I believe, must iterate somehow, someway, in order to generate an infinite number of sentences. Can’t go through a day without utilizing this recursive property of grammar.”

He took three paces to his left, turned, and took three paces back. He looked towards Miss Didactic … what was the woman’s name?. “Lots of gobbledy gook, dontcha think?”

He turned to the bearded boy. “Consider this,” he said. “I need to go to the store. I have to decide when to go. I have to make a decision. I have to decide to make a decision before I can make that decision of ‘when to go’. But I then have to make a decision to make the decision to make that decision ‘when to go’. Do you see what’s happening?”

“It’s all semantics.” Becoming annoyed, slightly angry, feeling foolish.

The Japanese woman laughed. “Isn’t everything ” she said. “Oh my. That’s brilliant.”

“Not my notion. Older than dirt. I stole it from a book by Alan Watts. Don’t know who he stole it from.”

“And that leaves us where?” put in Miss Didactic.

Lady yer underwear’s too damn tight. “Where indeed,” Ghiorso said. “Decision is neither voluntary nor involuntary. It just happens. You make your lists, your pros and cons, and you add up the columns, and think you have decided yea or nay, but when do you have enough information to substantiate your rows of this and that, and are you really certain of those yeses and noes, and what happens is we eventually just chose. Decisions just happen.”

“And the muses?” from slightly behind him, on is left. Him. Man sitting on a metal folding chair, front left. Older.

“Ah,” said Ghiorso, raising a hand, extending his index finger with a bit of a waggle. “What do you think?” He waited, turned his head to prompt a response. When thought furrowed the man’s face, Ghiorso said, “So the Greeks came up with the Nine Muses as a way to circumvent this mental conundrum.”

“Got it,” said the man, grinning. “Calliope made me do it.”

Some amusement in the room.

“I like it,” the man said.

“Thank you,” Ghiorso said, “but I take no credit. Tapping into the minds of brilliant men.” He looked left and right, slowly, content now with the turn the talk had taken. Less apathy, more interest. “Calliope, by the by, was the muse of epic poetry and eloquence.” He turned back to the man in the chair. “Care to give us the run down on the other eight?”

“Long’s I don’t have to stand up and prate to this bunch.”

“Sitting is fine. Go.”

“Far as I can recall,” the man said, basso not profundo, but demanding attention, “the Muses began their lives as nymph-like creatures. Something like anyway. Went around whispering in the ears of those who invoked them. Ancient Greek fellow named Hesiod named them as the nine muses: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Thalia, Terpsichore, and Urania.”

A nod from Ghiorso. “Good. Test on Tuesday.” He pushed a sleeve, checked his watch.  “Tempus fugit.” A nod to Miss Didactic. “I think a brief run down is in order. We need to fix a name with its function. Calliope, for example, the oldest of the muses, inspires epic poetry and eloquence. Keep in mind that most Greek epics were oral renditions. Homer’s The Odyssey is the most notable. Their memories and attention spans were somewhat more developed than ours. Erato is the muse of romantic poetry. Euterpe is the muse of music. Clio is the muse of history. Melpomene is one of two voices of the theater. Any thoughts on why theater might need two muses? Besides you, my friend,” smiling at the man in the folding chair. “Simple, really, when you think about it. Tragedy and comedy. Anybody reading Shakespeare these days?”

Fewer blank faces. A few nods, a smile, a hand quickly lowered.

“Thalia was the muse for Comedy. Melpomene’s counter part. Curiously, Mel was known as the woman who had everything: beauty, money, men. Everything but happiness. This is, it is said, the essence of tragedy: You can never satisfy your innermost desires. The Stones, right? Ya can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. And sometimes you might even get what you deserve. Asians call it karma. But we’ve wandered.” He looked around the room. A young long haired boy sitting on a window sill playing air guitar, mouthing the words to some song.

“Polyhymnia is the muse of lyric poetry. The lyric poem, as opposed to the epic or drama, is a shorter piece distinguished by its focus on the poet’s state of mind and personal themes rather than spinning a narrative. Hence, lyric poetry.”

Ghiorso counted on his fingers. “Where are we then? Who have I forgotten?”

“Terpsichore and Urania,” said the man in the chair.

“Ah yes. Mustn’t forget them. The muse of light poetry and dance is Terpsichore. She was the mother of the Sirens who so beguiled Odysseus. If you are current on your Greek mythology. If not, think country and western. She’s the one who put words into Willie Nelson’s head. And last, but not least, is Urania, the youngest who had a planet named after her; and, appropriately, is the muse of astrology and astronomy. Astrology was a different business to the Greeks than it is to us today. Think math and science.”

Ghiorso took a slow turn to the window and back. “The most interesting feature of this enumeration is not the names, but rather what they inspired. These inspirations became the focus of Greek interests. We have history, one science, one music, two theaters, and four types of  poetry. The Greeks were much endeared with words, it seems. Poetry was their bread and butter. In a word, Literature.”

With his hands in his coat pockets he walked to his left, circled slowly towards the windows, then back around to face his audience. “Literature emerges from nothing, the hollows of our brains, our muse, wherever, and ends as a book, an essay, a story, a poem, a play, some form of written work, words on paper waiting to be enlivened again, as they were when written, resuscitated by a reader, no longer merely ink blots on a blank page, but truth made manifest. And literature is not a show dog groomed to the nines. Literature is a mangy cur who follows you around, beguiling, irrepressible, becoming a fixture of the neighborhood just as literature read and reread becomes the boorish verbiage in one’s mind, echoing and reechoing, provoking, enlightening. And, as I said at the beginning, literature, like art, is where you find it. It is without intention. It becomes what readers make it. That’s all there is to it. Questions?